Posts Tagged 'Consensus Politics'

Cam Jong-Eu, Great Guiding Star of the Post-Democratic Century, has been at it again.

The Dear Autocrat has given another flatulent interview to The House magazine, where he was asked whether Nigel Farage should be included in the general election party leaders’ debate. The answer was classic Cameron:

‘Obviously we have to decide on this nearer the time, but the TV debates should be about, you know, the parties that are going to form the Government, in my view.’

When it comes to politics only members of the groovy gang are allowed to play. This is an example of the anti-democratic political consensus pulling up the drawbridge, lest any alternative to their cosy round-robin government club might be able to make use of such a high profile platform to expose the vacuous, self serving and ignorance quislings for the treacherous and duplicitous con artists they are.

The door is closed to those outside the bubble by the Oxbridge PPE grads who have stolen control of this country’s political system. Today it is Farage being kept on the margins. Tomorrow it could be someone who is genuine leadership material with a sound vision of a positive future for this country.

This isn’t about the personalities, it’s about the principle of enabling those people who still vote to be able to make an informed choice about how they cast their ballot within this substandard system. Cameron’s comments demonstrate how party politics is being stitched up to remain the preserve of the three serial failure parties, where no matter which of them forms the government the agenda and outcomes remain the same for the poor bloody citizen.

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In the Telegraph, Christopher Booker’s column leads with a story about the Met Office (h/t EU Referendum) – which quietly revised its prediction of global temperatures for the next five years and uploaded the much changed graph on Christmas Eve, a great day to bury inconvenient news – and why its forecasts are undermined by dogmatic climate change assumptions.

It’s an excellent reminder of the Met Office’s dereliction of duty in pursuit of an agenda, just as the country is being hit by another of those temperature drops and downfalls of snow that were supposed to be replaced by ‘warmer winters’, following the soaking summer which was supposed to have been replaced with ‘hotter, drier’ conditions. But it is the second part of Booker’s column that focuses on a story of far greater importance – UN complicity in the mistreatment and killing of refugees in Iraq’s Camp Ashraf.

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Camp Ashraf is yet another United Nations scandal where backroom agendas, intrigues and double dealing has resulted in a number of lives being lost violently with many other people’s lives put in peril.

But what else would one expect when the UN treats people with such unmitigated contempt, for example when Gadaffi’s Libya was appointed Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee? The same UN which in November last year went on to elect genocidal Sudan to the Economic and Social Council, a top U.N. body that regulates human rights groups, oversees U.N. committees on women’s rights, and crafts resolutions from Internet freedom to female genital mutilation. And it really surpassed itself when Mauritania, the world’s worst offender for slavery, was elected to the position of Vice President of the UN Human Rights Council – on Human Rights Day of all days. This while Syria remained on the UNESCO human rights committee!

Lets not forget the UN’s sex for food scandal and UN officials being complicit as police and troops working on behalf of the UN in Bosnia were exposed as being involved in sex trafficking of young women – behaviour that was brought to the big screen with the film The Whistleblower. It even extolled the virtues of China’s human rights record and its supposed respect for oppressed Uyghurs, Tibetans and other minority groups.

To describe this small handful of examples as Orwellian would be ludicrous understatement. Yet despite all of these scandals in recent years and many, many others besides, the UN continues to be paid for by us, the hard pressed taxpayers around the world, our money taken from us by the political class to fund this insanity.

The UN, a global organisation made up of unaccountable bureaucrats and representatives from countries including brutal and oppressive regimes over which we have no control, wields a huge amount of power around the world through its commissions and agencies. It is responsible for the pushing the sustainability cover story for the plan to increase its control over world governance via the insipid Agenda 21, while directly influencing what economic actions the EU follows through its Economic Commission for Europe, UNECE.

So, not for the first time, this blog asks the question, what is the point of continuing to bang our heads against a wall and fund an organisation that serves the interests of the international community so poorly? Going further this blog believes the time has long since passed for the UK to withdraw its membership. The UN is not a force for good. All too often it is the vehicle that facilitates the worst crimes human can commit.

Leaving the UN won’t happen all the while the political class directs operations in its own interest, but it should happen. This country has no place cooperating with the most brutal, vicious and corrupt regimes on this planet, much less legitimising their vile behaviour with our money co-membership on UN bodies.

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Regular readers will be familiar with the often noted examples of BBC bias when it comes to political coverage and promoting activism.

But a piece in the Irish Independent today shows the problem of state broadcaster employees exhibiting political bias is not confined to the BBC.

It seems monitoring of Ireland’s RTE news and current affairs coverage by Fianna Fail has thrown up some interesting statistics showing a similar phenomenon on the other side of the Irish Sea, particularly with the flagship Prime Time programme. Fianna Fail have submitted a dossier to RTE outlining their accusation of bias by the broadcaster:

The submission, which contained statistical evidence, states: “Prime Time appears to have taken a radically different approach to covering opposition voice. Before the election, share of voice was clearly biased in favour of the opposition. Since the election, that bias has been dramatically reversed.”

It goes on to say that despite identical Dail representation, Labour enjoyed 21.6 per cent share of voice before the election (when in opposition), compared to Fianna Fail’s 10.1 per cent after the election (having lost the election and become the main opposition). Fianna Fail is now getting more than 100 per cent less access to Prime Time than the Labour Party in the same position. It certainly suggests a very uneven approach to coverage that amounts to bias by omission.

Of course it won’t come as a shock that the more avowedly socialist a political party is, the more favoured it is by media corps stuffed to the gills with ‘progressive’ hacks keen to push their ideology on the public. But in Ireland this bunfight is somewhat interesting as the political spectrum ranges from broadly socialist to extreme socialist with nothing approaching a small ‘c’ conservative alternative. Perhaps ideological purity is the name of the game?

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Anyone who has listened to Ed Miliband (why, oh why…) in recent weeks, as he witters on about tomorrow’s voting system referendum, will have noticed the line to take that has been adopted by his PRs and spin doctors – that of electoral mandate.

Repeatedly, including this morning on Radio 4’s Today programme, Miliband has stated that the ‘Conservative led coalition’ is undertaking cuts and other actions for which they ‘do not have a mandate’.

It seems strange of Miliband to complain about this. After all, was it not Labour who allowed millions of migrants into the country without a mandate to do so? Was it not Labour who signed the Lisbon Treaty without a mandate to do so? And where was Miliband’s righteous indignation about Labour’s lack of mandate when doing what it wanted, irrespective of the wishes of the public?

To emphasise the hypocrisy of it all, where was Miliband when a lawyer representing the Labour government argued in court that people had no reasonable entitlement to expect that a political party will carry out its manifesto pledges? Did he resign in noble anguish? Did he hell.

This brings us back to the reality of our situation today. We are merely pawns in the self serving power games of the rival factions of the political class. They spend all their time fighting like rats in a sack about trivialities because when it comes to matters of substance they are in agreement.

The voting reform referendum is just another triviality. Another contrived battle of ‘principle’ helpfully played out as a major issue by the dumbed down mainstream media. As this blog has asked before and does again now, what is the point deciding how we vote when our votes do nothing to determine which people wield power?

All AV would do is further cement consensus politics in this country. It will permanently shore up the elective position of the political class and further distance people from decison making power. First past the post is a lesser evil, but elections are now irrelevant anyway as laws are handed down from the EU for our toy politicians to burnish, embellish and implement without hesitation.

The vote we should have, about whether this country should fully govern its own affairs through its own democratic structures, or accept rule from overseas by bureaucrats in Brussels and accept the EU’s alien anti democratic structures, is not on offer to us. We are denied that choice.

None from the Conservatives, Labour or Liberal Democrats want the people of this country to decide for themselves and make that fundamental decision about how this country is governed. So why should we play their game and take time to vote about which system best suits the narrow political interests of those insipid groups of power seeking climbers, liars and charlatans?

A plague on all their houses.

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The Press Association reports that Foreign Secretary William Hague has ruled out fresh concessions to the Liberal Democrats if they fail to secure victory in next month’s referendum on voting reform for Westminster elections. So what?

Wee Willie, our principle-free Prime Minister, and his doppelganger Calamity Clegg are as usual trying to focus attention on triviality rather than substance by ramping up the hype about the Alternative Vote referendum. Meanwhile the inconvenient fact that this referendum is utterly meaningless seems lost on the myopic media which with a total absence of perspective is slavishly assisting in the distraction from the real issues by devoting thousands of column inches to the subject.

What is the point of us saying how MPs should be elected when we are denied a say in who actually governs us?

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Ireland’s voters have moved the deck chairs around and the faces in the government ministries will now change. But little else.

Fine Gael will be the largest party in the Dail and form yet another coalition, and Enda Kenny is almost certain to be the new taoiseach. But beyond that, what difference will Ireland’s voters see?

There is excited talk of Kenny starting the process of renegotiating the previous government’s 85bn-euro (£72bn) EU/IMF loan package. It is something that has echoes of David Cameron’s pledge to renegotiate the repatriation of power from Brussels to Westminster and is likely to have the same outcome.

But then, what else do the Irish expect? Fine Gael actually helped Brian Cowen’s sinking government to put the Finance Bill to a vote in the Dail, supported some of its provisions and failed to stop the ones it opposed from passing. It is unrealistic in the extreme of Fine Gael to give the impression they will be able to change the terms of the expensive loan the EU and IMF put together.

Bar some tinkering around the edges nothing will change. Ireland’s voters will still be paying higher taxes and experiencing huge cuts in spending on public services. They voted for change but will not see any, because when all is said and done the government of Ireland is cannot be found in the Dail, it resides in Brussels. No one was able to vote for or against it.

Those making the decisions for Ireland have not appeared on any ballot paper. Ireland is not mistress in her own house. The democratic process engaged in by 70% of those eligible to vote is meaningless, a charade, an illusion. How can Ireland’s government be on a collision course with the EU, when the EU is Ireland’s government? It is already making this clear:

As Irish voters headed for the polling booths on Friday, the European Commission bluntly declared that the terms of the EU-IMF bailout “must be applied” whatever the will of Ireland’s people or regardless of any change of government.

“It’s an agreement between the EU and the Republic of Ireland, it’s not an agreement between an institution and a particular government,” said a Brussels spokesman.

A European diplomat, from a large eurozone country, told The Sunday Telegraph that “the more the Irish make a big deal about renegotiation in public, the more attitudes will harden”.

“It is not even take it or leave it. It’s done. Ireland’s only role in this now is to implement the programme agreed with the EU, IMF and European Central Bank. Irish voters are not a party in this process, whatever they have been told,” said the diplomat.

It will become apparent to the Irish people in the weeks and months that despite the campaigning, the voting and the time consuming counting they have changed precisely nothing, they are not a party in this process. It has been nothing more than a very expensive piece of theatre.

The question that will then need to be asked is what will the Irish people do about it. Will they confirm their surrender, or will they again satisfy their hunger for independence?

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If you are one of the increasing number of people who are sick to death of the Vichy Conservatives, cheer yourself up by reading this piece on ConservativeHome and many of the comments from ever more disaffected Tories who are waking up to the Cameroon coup of that party.

As more people come to realise Cameron is as much a conservative as Michael Foot ever was, they are severing their links with the party and turning their back on the Tories.

As you would expect, there are the usual cries of those fools who claim not sticking with Cameron’s social democracy will only let Labour back in. But they are among a shrinking band of people who haven’t realised the only difference between this coalition government and Labour are the faces of the people in Ministerial positions.

For the average voter it is now obvious that whether you vote Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem you still get the same political class consensus undermining this country, eroding our democracy and snatching more of our money to serve their own narrow interests rather than ours. Only embarrassment at being conned so well is preventing many conservatives from ditching Cameron’s quisling social democrats. But as the anger builds the ejection of the Cameroon cuckoo from the Conservative nest draws closer.

“I’m incredibly sorry that people have had a difficult time. This is not an easy situation”

And it isn’t made any easier by the arrogance and incompetence of people who are paid to do jobs they are singularly incapable of carrying out effectively or properly. Sorry, it seems, is now the easiest word. Sorry is what is offered up readily in place of properly carrying out the basic functions of a government.

This is now a nation on its knees. We have been dragged here by successive governments, staffed by over rated managerialist incompetents, that have intentionally allowed the proper functions of a nation state to decay into uselessness because they don’t believe this country should punch above its weight. They have the ‘small island’ mentality. The one that recites the narrative that it isn’t our place to be important on the world stage. Never mind the globally significant achievements of this country and its people over the centuries, they believe we must not be a world power and they sneer at anyone who disagrees. Instead they say we must scale down our capability and our influence to match the small geographical area of these islands because anything else constitutes some kind of arrogance.

Theirs is an artifical construct. Only a fool would argue that a nation’s influence should be constrained because of its physical size. What matters is not the amount of land a nation covers, but what the people of that nation can do, what challenges they can overcome, what great strides they can take for the betterment of everyone and what great examples they can set. Britain earned its place at the world’s top table because of the entrepreneurial and daring mindset of many of its people.

The rush for mediocrity and the guilt complex of the self loathing has seen us replace our can-do attitude and sense of self worth with incompetence and failure. And the self loathing celebrate this. That is where we are today and that is, in a nutshell, how we were led here. It is why our self reliance has been supplanted by reliance on the state. It is why every measure of this country’s capability has declined, from the standard of our education to the quality of our goods and services, from the strength of our armed forces to the ability of our public servants.

It is a nauseating disgrace. It is a national humiliation.

The first consideration of any government is the protection and security of the people it serves. The government failed spectacularly to do that in Libya. While the governments of other countries were busy providing a means of exit in the absence of commercial travel, arranging transit to ports and airports in convoys, generating lists of people to be extracted, and putting on the ground a visible organising presence by embassy staff to manage the operation at the airport, the oh-so-grand United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office was telling Britons to stay put if they wished or leave on commercial flights.

Listening to the accounts of Britons who had made it out of the country yesterday – before the FCO had shaken itself from its laser like focus on surrendering this country’s interests to the European Union – we heard the humiliating tales of Portuguese and Argentine embassy staff providing assistance to Britons while our embassy staff were nowhere to be seen.

A nation that once governed effectively and ran competently a global Empire in the challenging days of ships and horse mounted couriers, has found itself incapable in the digital age of communicating clearly and mounting a cohesive evacuation operation for several hundred of its citizens stuck in a country only a few hours flying time from London.

That the first aircraft chartered by the FCO to fly people out of Tripoli developed a technical fault and sat on the ground for 10 hours, without anyone having the wit to source another without delay, was truly symbolic. It was a working example of this nation’s decline and the extent to which our character has been eroded by handwringing wimps.

So it was no surprise that the Foreign Office’s failure should provoke a typically pathetic response from David Cameron that the government must ‘learn the lessons’ from it. What utter bullshit. This isn’t the first time. It is code for doing nothing and trying to dodge the deserved contempt of the yet again let down public.

Where are the lessons that have been learned from previous failures? Anyone can learn from their own mistakes, but wise people learn from the mistakes of others. But not in this country. With our useless stuffed suits wandering aimlessly around Whitehall we continue to make them and are condemned to continue making them. These are the kind of people who have transformed Britain into third rate country deserving of scorn. They did not want us to have a nation of which we can be proud and even now actively play down moments in our history of which we should be proud and that should be inspiring the next generation.

The people of this country have been lulled into a virtual coma by those who want to undermine it. The political parties, the establishment, the media, all of them have conspired actively or through silence in this evisceration of our nation. It will continue until some people have the courage to take this country back from the quisling, defeatist bastards and make it something we can be proud of again.

Forgive them for they knew not what they did. They were desperate for change and those cast-iron pledges were so plausible and made with such conviction. How could someone not honour such clear and unambiguous promises?

He just seemed so… sincere. The narrowed eyes, the tightened lips, the determined set of his jaw. The recognition of the urgent need to act to put right so much of what was wrong. He knew what we wanted, what the country needed, and he told us he would deliver it. His promises of change gave us hope.

Not letting matters rest there on the Lisbon Treaty.

Replacing the Human Rights Act.

Repatriating powers from the EU.

Not raising VAT.

Keeping universal child benefit.

Despite his promises, his commitment and his determination, none of them have been honoured. And now we add to the list another broken promise to reduce the exorbitant duty on fuel when prices rise to a high level. Another issue, but the same outcome.

He has overseen more U-turns than a driving instructor. Pity those foolish trusting souls who closed their ears as the warnings were sounded long before the election. How could so many have been taken in?

They now ask themselves how could one man be so dishonourable. They wonder why more people did not grasp that he would say anything we wanted to hear in order to reach Downing Street. The fog is clearing and revealing he always had his own agenda that did not include keeping any of these key promises. Reality has dawned on them. The deception is complete.

Conservative. Labour. Liberal Democrat. It matters not. The faces and the colour scheme may change, but none will depart from their common path. Their route is constant, their destination a place we do not wish to go. That reality is now bathed in brilliant light. The view could not be more clear.

Soon will be the time for courage. How many will dare to tread new ground and reject the self serving consensus? How many will stop, remember the litany of lies and broken promises, recognise the three heads as belonging to a common body and reject all three? Will there be enough of them to put an end to the conspiracy of the political class and take back power so the servants no longer act as our masters?

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One expected consequence of the shocking mass murder of people at the political surgery of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson is the frankly disgraceful attempt of some to make capital out of the attack to shamelessly further their own political agenda by attributing responsibility to people that had nothing to do with it, but whom they wish to undermine nevertheless.

This has manifested itself with various tweets and blog posts laying blame for the attack at the doors of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the US Republican Party in general,and the disparate Tea Party movements around the US. Biased BBC and the Telegraph’s Toby Harnden examine this with two must read posts that provide some much needed context.

Another expected consequence of such a terrible criminal act is kneejerk responses that paint an inaccurate and unfair picture of the American people. Comment that asserts some kind of British moral superiority as a result of the tragedy, then suggests the outlook of the American people calls into question if we can describe America to be a democracy. This is what I want to look at in more detail.

One example that particularly stands out for me is a post from Conservative activist Chris Hawes. It suggests not only a lack of knowledge but the absence of any self awareness of our situation in Britain. I’ll explain. Hawes briefly tours the US political scene and notes the polarised landscape, then goes on to suggest to readers that the Democrats and Republicans in the US:

‘truly hate each other in a way that is totally alien to us in Britain,’

This is an insult to the Americans that stems from complete ignorance of American politics. I know from personal experience that Hawes’ claim is way off the mark. It is true to say that the Democrats and Republicans frequently hate what each other stand for politically, but unlike here in the UK there exists a sense of unity borne from the shared experience of being part of the great American nation.

Hawes then incredibly goes on to add 2+2 and make 7 when he opines:

Going back to this specific incident, Gifford was at a public meeting called “Congress On Your Corner” where she was actively responding to her constituents and doing her job when she was gunned down. The assailant didn’t appear to be interested in asking a question and getting a response from his Congresswoman – in short, participating in the democratic process – but intent on assassination.

All of this together makes me wonder whether America can truly be called a democracy any more. Democracy requires consensus and acceptance of the democratic process – if an opponent is elected, they have the mandate to govern until the next election. Violence should never be part of political rhetoric; reasoned debate is foundation of democracy. If polticians have to be concerned about being attacked if they support an unpopular motion (even if it is only unpopular amongst a certain demographic), democracy is failing.

I’m sorry, but that is utter nonsense. Since when has an act of terror or the act of a mad man/men denoted that a nation might no longer be democratic? The murderous incident was perpetrated by a man who clearly has psychological issues, was rejected for military service (which takes some doing) and harboured violent intent to government and while possessing a hatred of the law.

The target of the attack, Rep. Giffords, was the kind of Democract who appealed to a large number of Republicans, being (as Harnden points out) a deficit hawk, someone who voted to lift the ban on guns in Washington DC and who voted against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House. If anything, Rep. Giffords created more anger among Democrats than Republicans, which is why a blogger at the left wing DailyKos blog said that Giffords was ‘dead to me‘ for failing to back Pelosi.

Hawes is also wrong to suggest democracy requires consensus. In fact, consensus undermines democracy because it stymies healthy adversarial politics which provides people with political alternatives. Consensus has been used by the political class to ensure the voting public is presented with nothing more than an opportunity to change the faces of MPs while leaving the direction of the country unchanged.

The piece goes on to say that violence should never be part of political rhetoric. Yet the Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems in this country have all been guilty of it. Remember all the talk in recent elections of decpatitation strategies and George Osborne referring to the attempt to defeat Ed Balls as a castration strategy? In a nation where guns are a way of life, gun related metaphors can only be expected, even if they appear unseemly in countries like ours that have been disarmed through legislation. But the metaphors are not an incitement to murder politicians with whom people are dissatisfied or that political opponents hate each other personally.

Hawes then says that if politicians have to be concerned about being attacked for supporting a particular line then democracy is failing. This line in particular really rankles. Democracy is failing, but not for the reason he offers. Look at Britain. With all three main parties singing loudly from the same hymn sheet on the central political issues of the day, such as the being governed by the EU, taxation, state interference etc. the electorate is being denied democratic alternatives. The people we have asked to serve and represent us are ignoring us.

No number of letters to MPs and Councillors, campaigns, petitions, demonstrations and marches to signal our discontent or insistence in a change of direction by our representatives have any effect. The political class is determined to tell us what is best for us and impose it upon us regardless of what we think. That is what is subverting democracy and needs to be tackled, not the act of a lunatic.

The attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords, resulting in the death of at least six people, was horrific. It was the act of a deranged man or men. But it should not be used as an excuse by media outlets or individuals to build strawmen to knock down, further agendas or seek to make political capital. Such behaviour is disgraceful.

I feel nothing but sympathy for the families and friends of those whose lives have been cruelly snatched from them and I hope Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of that maniac who are being treated in hospital make full, swift recoveries.

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A quick change of pace to highlight a thought provoking post by Old Holborn, who in response to more unthinking hyperactivity from Housing Minister Grant Shapps, opines:

When will our Lords and masters realise that it is only when Government interferes that the problems begin?

Every housing boom and bust has been caused by the State, desperate to win more votes or desperate to redistribute your earnings to those who have not earned them. Our housing shortage is caused by numerous reasons, amongst them:

You may be familiar with the saying ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’. The thinking behind it was that where possible nations should use diplomacy to resolve a dispute and do not rush to confrontation. But by way of a last resort nations should have the ability and willingness to use force if those diplomatic and peaceful methods fail.

When it comes to the EU that old adage has been transformed into ‘Utter meaningless words and carry a big carrot’. Far from a stick and carrot approach to dealing with worrying developments, the craven EU employs a unique ‘carrot and bigger carrot’ approach.

This was evident after the Russian invasion of Georgia. French President Nicolas Sarkozy packaged up and delivered to Russia an EU peace plan to bring an end to the short, one-sided conflict with Georgia. A quick scan showed the EU plan had more holes than a sieve and favoured Russia disproportionately. Russia duly flouted the terms brazenly and the EU offered nothing more than a few limp words of disappointment. Within a few months and with Russian troops still on Georgian soil, the EU completed its ‘tough approach’ to Russia in typically hypocritical and unprincipled manner by opening up trade talks with Moscow.

Now the EU is at it again, this time uttering meaningless words and reaching for the carrot sack on the subject of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. As European Voice reported on Monday:

The European Union’s leaders have issued statements warning the Russian authorities about the treatment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who has been convicted for a second time.

A court in Moscow announced on 27 December that Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil company and sometime political opponent of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, had been convicted of embezzlement and money-laundering on top of his existing conviction from a trial in 2005. He has been in prison since the 2005 conviction and a further term of imprisonment is now expected.

Apparently the EU has said that the severity of punishment meted out to Mikhail Khodorkovsky could impact bilateral relations after Moscow courts found the oil tycoon guilty of embezzlement. Oh please. If the EU is capable of turning its collective back on Georgia and appeasing Russia in the self centred way it did in 2008, can we really be expected to believe it will do a damned thing to defend the interests of Khodorkovsky? Why do they bother with this theatre? It is gesture politics and Moscow knows as well as we that the EU will run away at the first hint of any back straightening in the Kremlin.

The EU is only capable of subverting democracy and eroding the rights of people living in its member states. The bureaucracy that thinks it’s a country is nothing but a paper tiger when it involves itself in matters on the world stage. Any entity that consists of more than a few north African tribesmen is just too strong to tackle.

History is repeating itself and Moscow will laugh off the Brussels bleating as the vacuous posturing it is. It would be no surprise if we see a repeat of a major EU power, such as France, announcing a major deal with Russia within a few short months. The only question is, what does Russia want that the EU will fall over itself to hand over? In the meantime Brussels should do us all a favour and give up the histrionics.

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That would be an appropriate name revision for the Howard League for Penal Reform. Over time the Howard League has shown its agenda to be not merely the reform of the penal system, but the eradication of effective and appropriate sentencing of criminals who have broken the law and thereby offended against society.

Note that description – offended against society. Someone who breaks the law is an offender. But to the aptly named Frances Crook, the head of Howard League, the word ‘offender’ is now considered to be an “insulting” term that demeans individuals and hinders their rehabilitation. You could not make this stuff up. She says:

“Someone who commits an offence is not an offender, they are someone who has done something [yes, committed an offence you idiotic dolt]. The action does not define the whole person. They may also do good things and they will certainly fit into other categories that can offer a different definition like parent or friend. By insisting that the offence overcomes all other parts of the person we are condemning them to a sub-human category for whom there is no hope.”

Offenders are not sent to prison for being a parent or a friend. They are sentenced for being an offender which is the only suitable and appropriate definition. Frances Crook and her fellow travellers will not be content until there are no consequences or sanctions for offenders who commit crimes that mark them as part of a minority in society that refuses to conform to the law and feels entitled to cause harm and distress to other people.

The Howard League has become a parody of itself. Its permanent state of handwringing to minimise the punishment component of a sentence and focus exclusively on rehabilitation – which they believe should preferably be in the very society that needs to be protected from such offenders – demonstrates it has lost touch with reality.

Is there some kind of anarchist conspiracy in this country that is determined to undermine anything and everything?

Rarely does any form of interaction with the State achieve its required aim. There is always some antidote to common sense lurking ready to prevent people from rectifying a problem. There are always ‘rules’ and ‘procedures’ to follow that should take days and end up taking months. Then we have groups like the Howard League determined to stop any offender going to prison. We have groups determined to allow any migrant into this country who feels like pitching up here, regardless of the effect on infrastructure, services and required public spending to support them. We have organisations demanding the handout of every conceivable benefit and grant who don’t stop to think where the money to fund it will come from. We have groups that are determined to drag us back into the Georgian era in order to ‘fight climate change’ whose idea of a solution to this faux problem is to tax everyone to the hilt and if possible prevent the continuation of our species. There’s more besides. There is an insanity attending the bureacucracy that is destined to result in chaos. Is there any way out of it?

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Over on Guido Fawkes’ blog there is a photo from the Once-Were-Conservatives party conference, reproduced here…

Oh how my sides split. Sure, it’s a harmless piece of in-house humour for the drones who run CCHQ. But I couldn’t help thinking, if only the Conservative MPs put so much effort and attention to detail into listening to what the British public want and actually representing our views in the House of Commons, instead of getting elected then doing whatever they are told in the hope of securing a government job from David Cameron.

The joke is on us. It is the very people who are betrayed by the self serving political elite in all three parties, who ignore reality that what matters to us doesn’t matter to the political class and will therefore be ignored, yet still go out to vote and elect these troughing swine. Once in the House the MPs’ ears are turned off and their eyes focus on personal ambitions.

This is why we are promised referenda that are then withdrawn. This is why we are promised change that never materialises. This is why, despite the majority wanting the UK to be politically and legally sovereign again this insipid coalition of social democrats continues to agree to continuing offshoring of law making power and political control to the EU.

Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dems – they are all the same. We are all left dissatisfied with them but still allow them to play their power games at the expense of our freedoms and our very sovereignty. When will this mass sleepwalk end and people wake up to the reality that our democracy is an illusion? A plague on all their houses.

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When David Cameron came clean about his preferred approach to a referendum Lisbon Treaty, namely not holding a referendum despite promises and assurances, he was able to claim Conservative hands had been tied by the treaty already being ratified by Gordon Brown’s Labour government and other EU member states.

But what will be Cameron’s excuse when the deeply unpopular plan for the Royal Navy and French Navy to share aircraft carriers and integrate operations is confirmed? After all, as EU Referendum reminds us, this is nothing more than the realisation of a long standing European military cooperation agreement signed by the Conservatives under John Major in 1996.

The 2010 gloss painted on this plan will be the pressing need to reduce public spending in this era of austerity. But only a fool would buy that line. Are we to believe Major and Co. knew some fourteen years ago that more than a decade of Labour government was forthcoming and the Treasury would be left empty and liable for billions of pounds in debt, requiring us to resort to such humiliating measures? Thanks to the reaction of some in the military and the mainstream media, Cameron would rather we didn’t notice this was a plan hatched by Tory wets in government that is about to be executed under this new group of Tory wets, in cahoots with the Eurofanatical Liberal Democrats.

This time Cameron can’t claim he has been painted into a corner by Labour. This idiocy was Tory in origin and design. And it won’t be a matter of this going ahead just because it’s too difficult to reverse, it will go ahead because this is what cast-iron Cameron and his band of ‘power not principle’ hangers-on want. Perhaps the vichy Tories will revert to their usual refrain… never again, until the next time.

You can be sure the only thing that will shift here is the line in the sand the Tories keep re-drawing every time they promise absolutely no more European integration, before doing the exact opposite. Maybe this is the reason why Tory MPs like Douglas Carswell struggle with issues such as these and miss the point entirely.

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Ahead of the General Election, the Labour Party demonstrated its fetish for celebrity and gimmickry hoping the popularity of entertainers and the famous would rub off and translate into electoral support. Now the Conservatives are continuing the sad spectacle as ‘Call me Dave’ Cameron takes time out to ‘get down with the street’ by cosying up with the enemy of privacy, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook.

The excuse used for this hobnobbing is that, as ‘Call me Dave’ explained, the Cleggerons plan to use the Facebook social network to ask British citizens for ideas on spending cuts. The Telegraph goes on to explain that:

The site, which has 26 million UK users, will invite people to submit their ideas for where public money might be saved via a “Spending Challenge Channel” on its Democracy UK page. There will also be microsites specially tailored to focus on key issues open for discussion and debate among the voting public.

What is the point? Reasonable ideas such as not sending money to the EU so it can be sent back to us minus the massive administration costs, not sending money to countries like India and China which both devote multi million pound sums to their national space programmes, not sending our money to fund the training of overseas trade union activists, not using taxpayers’ money to subsidise wind turbine proliferation that drives up electricity prices and increases the risk of rota disconnections, and so on, will be ignored.

If it is beyond the wit of Ministers to identify what spending in their departments is not essential and can therefore be reduced or cut without affecting the delivery of necessary front line services, then they have no business being in office.

This is just another attempt to give people the illusion of being able to influence the political class, using gimmicks to distract people from serious scrutiny of the Government and its performance. It is bad enough that the public is denied a genuine stake in driving policy, it is even worse that we are treated like children by a bunch of paternalist control freaks who think they know best what’s good for us.

You would have to have a heart of stone not to feel some pity for those Conservatives who clung hopefully to the belief that once in office David Cameron would suddenly reveal a cunningly hidden Euroscepticism. Having promised the British people the final say on the Lisbon Treaty with his ‘cast-iron’ pledge, he backed down when it was ratified saying that it was now law and it was too late to stop Lisbon taking effect.

However, Cameron did say that he ‘would not let matters rest there’. People had hope. He was still the man with a plan. Would he go to the people and ask them if they were content to remain bound by the measures wrapped up in the Lisbon Treaty? Er, no. Instead he would bravely ‘negotiate’ with the EU for the repatriation of ‘some powers’ that should, by any measure, reside with our elected representatives in Parliament.

‘Don’t worry, wait until after the election. Dave will show what he’s made of and get our powers back’ was the paraphrased sentiment uttered by some of the regulars on ConservativeHome. ‘He’s just playing the EU down until after the election’ claimed a number of commentators. ‘He is very Eurosceptic really’ opined others. All clutched at straws and prayed for a Cameron victory so the UK could assert its primacy again and take back – with EU consent, natch – some of the key powers that a sovereign nation should possess for itself.

Today, however, David Cameron completed his multi-stage retreat from his crowd pleasing comments to his personally favoured position – keeping Britain firmly under the control of the EU bureaucracy in Brussels.

The publication of the full coalition agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, aka ‘power at any cost’, has revealed that the manifesto promise to negotiate the repatriation of powers from the EU – the very measure designed to make up for conceding defeat over the Lisbon Treaty – has been abandoned. Completely. It is dead. Despite multiple promises, each less robust than the previous one, David Cameron has completed his journey from supposed Eurosceptic to paid-up Europhile, thus cementing his position as just another lying politician. The promise to negotiate the repatriation of powers from the EU has been replaced with this meaningless pledge :

‘We will examine the balance of the EU’s existing competences.’

A substantial number of people – opposed to the provisions of Lisbon but prepared to suspend their disbelief and give Cameron the benefit of the doubt because of the pledge to negotiate the repatriation of powers from the EU – voted Conservative in good faith. They are just about to discover they have been conned, tricked, lied to, by a self serving and sleazy control freak who will abandon any principle or promise as long as it results in power or personal gain.

Believe me, because of the impact of this deception on the governance of this country, it is without any sense of triumphalism that I say, ‘I told you so’. Now everyone can see for themselves the true nature of David Cameron. But it is too late now because Cameron, having hijacked the Conservative Party to bring about his Social Democrat agenda, has achieved what he wanted for himself and taken control of Downing Street. Now he will stick two fingers up at the country and do exactly as he pleases, aided and abetted by his fellow travellers from the rampantly Europhile Liberal Democrats.

Welcome to the new politics, where people supposedly hold the power over the state. Where despite Conservative promise after promise, Europe has been confirmed as your country not just your continent. Welcome to the Age of Deceitful Dave and Sidekick Nick.

Nick Clegg has just made a speech where he has outlined how the Government intends to reduce the power of the state over the individual by ‘tearing through the statute book’. He is pledging that people will be asked what laws they want to be repealed. He is saying that the Con-Lib coalition will:

– Restore the hard won liberties
– Reduce the power of political elites
– Redistribution of power away from the centre

It sounds wonderful. David Cameron and Nick Clegg are telling us they are going to deliver radical reform and empowerment. But there is a fundamental dishonesty in this rousing rhetoric because there is a complete absence of any reference to our real government, the EU. We are likely to be offered a referendum about having a new voting system, but there is no referendum on offer asking the British people to decide if we wish to remain governed by the unelected and unaccountable European Union. No one is offering us the opportunity to say we want to be goverened exclusively by our Parliament and want our Courts to enforce only laws that originate in this country, enacted by elected representatives we can vote democratically to keep in the Commons or remove as we see fit. In his speech, Clegg let slip the reason for this when he said:

‘When people have power they use it’

Clegg followed that line by saying; ‘And when they are denied it, there is anger and disappointment’. Well, that is what we should expect in due course then, because the fact is the political class is still resolved to carefully controlling the limited power we are being granted. It is distancing the electorate from any decision making on the major issues, such as how we are governed and who makes the overwhelming majority of our laws. We are being left with a tiny, peripheral role in reforming trivial matters while enjoying only a very limited sliver of empowerment.

We will not have any say over essential issues, such as how we produce the energy needed to power this country, the number of fish our fleets can catch and how, the rules concerning extradition of British citizens, how we dispose of our domestic waste, the costs to business of adhering to unnecessary regulations, how our financial services industry operates, whether or not we can exclude people from these shores whose presence is not in the national interest, and a host of other core matters. So when Clegg says; ‘We will ask you which laws you think should go’ his is being misleading in the extreme, because there will be thick red lines that ordinary people will not be allowed to cross. EU laws and regulations are off limits to people who are not part of the political class. And still the political class maintains the pretence that we are sovereign and in control of our own affairs. It is a sham.

While many people will cheer the news that the database state is being rolled back, ensuring we have will have some personal freedoms and civil liberties returned to us, many do not realise we are still being denied any say in the nature of our democracy. This is a gaping hole in the proposals that the Cleggerons have no intention of filling. We are required to know our place – and for Cameron and Clegg, that means fealty to the European Union and subservience to the political class. We are being promised a feast when all we are going to get are some carefully selected crusts from the table. We are being treated with contempt. We are being conned. New politics? Don’t be daft.

The Abid Naseer case, where an al-Qaeda member who came to Britain posing as a student but intent on blowing up British citizens, was notable for one important reaction to the ruling of the special immigration tribunal. That was the reaction of the new Home Secretary, Theresa May. She quite incredibly said the government would not be appealing against the ruling, handed down by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission:

“We are disappointed that the court has ruled that Abid Naseer and Ahmad Faraz Khan should not be deported to Pakistan, which we were seeking on national security grounds.

“As the court agreed, they are a security risk to the UK. We are now taking all possible measures to ensure they do not engage in terrorist activity.”

Many people were extremely critical of this decision, rightly so because it again made crystal clear that the interests of people considered to be engaged in serious wrongdoing have been promoted above those of the law abiding majority. The pathetic response from Theresa May doesn’t tell us what the government intends to do about it. The reason for that pathetic response is that the Con-Lib government isn’t going to do a thing about it. Despite the fine words and pledges of action, this is another of those areas where David Cameron has executed one of his now infamous U-turns – over five months ago, barely noticed by the media.

It was in January that this blog highlighted a story demonstrating a shift in Conservative thinking, a shift that would see it kick into the long grass its plan to scrap the Human Rights Act (HRA) and create a British Bill of Rights. The UK Human Rights Act, uniquely among EU member states, incorporates all the case law not just of this country, but of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. With a significant number of contradictory and perverse judgments coming from that Court, the Act is a confusing dog’s breakfast that does more to protect the interests of people seeking to avoid the consequences for their actions than the law abiding majority. But in any case, Cameron’s Bill of Rights, wouldn’t make any real difference because the Tories want to remain within the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights.

Theresa May’s running up of the white flag is evidence of the Conservative sham when it comes to dealing with the HRA. There was nothing else she could say because the Tories have run away from their own commitment. There was no information about what she intends to do about this idiocy because the Tories are now resolved to ‘letting matters rest there’. Does that sound familiar? It should because that those where the words used by David Cameron when promising to deal with the Lisbon Treaty if he came to power after it was ratified. Lo and behold, the U-turn on the HRA is another climb down designed to suit the interests of European harmonisation.

What is so profoundly dishonest is that it now seems the Conservatives are giving the impression that their backing away from the replacement of the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights is the fault of the Liberal Democrats. The Telegraph, five months behind the curve on things that matter, plays the Conservatives’ useful idiot yet again as it furthers the Tory spin operation. Deputy Political Editor, Robert Winnett, chunters on about the Tory manifesto pledge on a Bill of Rights and Cameron’s quote that the protection the law (HRA) offered to criminals was a “glaring example of what is going wrong in our country”, before spinning the line that the plans may have been delayed following the coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats. He goes on to say that:

There was confusion yesterday over the introduction of the new Bill of Rights after a senior Cabinet minister indicated that plans to repatriate powers from Brussels had been abandoned. Asked on the BBC Radio Four World at One programme if the Government would consider repealing relevant “major European law”, Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said: “I can’t comment on that, we’re not planning that.”

It’s only confusing if you’ve not been paying attention to the signals coming out of Millbank over the last five months. The decision has nothing to do with the useless Lib Dims, they are just being made a convenient patsy for a decision taken months ago. We can expect the Lib Dims to be used to provide Cameron with the cover he has long sought to indulge his personal Europhile desires by backing away from promised negotiations to repatriate other powers from the EU.

We have been spun a tale of a new politics being created, one that serves the people rather than the political class. The reality is we are seeing the political class perpetrate a fraud against the public, using the challenges of working in coalition as an excuse for following an agenda that abandons pledges offered to appease the public, while tightening the politicians’ grip on the levers of power.